MUNCIE, Ind. — As students flood toward the buses outside Southside Middle School, some hand over a neon notecard to the adult volunteers rooted near the hallway walls.

It's a Friday afternoon in November, and that card is a ticket to food for the weekend for more than a quarter of the student body. These kids are relying on it, judging by the panic on the faces of those who lost or forgot their card.

One by one they are handed a drawstring backpack. It holds three meals and a snack for each day of the weekend. This week it's a large bag of corn flakes, canned tuna and chicken, canned vegetables, soup, a banana, applesauce, juice, a beef stick and a pack of cookies.

Debbie Huston also slips in one item the whole family can eat. This time it's a box of mac and cheese. Once a month it's a big jar of peanut butter.

"Get you some fruit" says Julie Barnes, a volunteer from Fairlawn Church of Christ, directing each child to the table of apples, bananas, juice, milk and individually wrapped mini bagels the cafeteria had left after lunch.

Most fight through the traffic flow to grab a couple apples, stuffing them quickly in the bag. One looks around before slipping an extra bagel in the pocket of his sweatpants, like he feels guilty for picking the strawberry cream cheese-covered treat over another apple.

Many choose with a younger sibling in mind, exclaiming that their sister or brother loves chocolate milk before slipping it in the bag.

Then a young boy walks up to Huston, nervously clasping his hands. He glances around before standing on tiptoe to ask her a question, too quietly for any one else to hear.

Huston looks over to the dwindling pile of bags and quickly does the mental math. There were 10 kids who weren't in school earlier when the neon notecards were passed out. That's 10 extra bags she can give to others, but it's hard to keep track of how many are left in the few minutes of chaos.

"Go get a bag," she tells him. "Then come see me about getting on the waiting list."

At Southside, 87 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch, a statistic schools commonly look at when considering poverty. Southside's is the fourth-highest percentage in the district, behind Longfellow, Grissom and South View elementaries.

The way Huston sees it, if a middle schooler is asking for food, they are in need. They don't need to prove anything to her to get on the list, she said, they just have to ask.

"I don't know what anybody's walk is," she said. "Anybody can go through hard times at any time."

When this started a year ago, Huston was giving a handful of students bags of food that she collected and stored in a small closet-like space at school. Now 160 backpacks line the hallway on Friday afternoons, feeding 28 percent of Southside students. Huston stocks an unused classroom with shelves of food, clothes, toiletries and other necessities.

Aside from the backpacks of food, students can discreetly shop at the pantry for whatever they need, be it shoes, coats, toilet paper or feminine products. If a student needs something the pantry doesn't have, Huston goes out and buys it using cash donations.

The weekly backpack program is currently capped at 160 through the holidays, Huston said. She's had to stockpile more food than usual for each day of the week-long Thanksgiving break and two-week break in December. Some boxes are stacked nearly to the ceiling.

But the program will grow again after January because Huston had to start a waiting list, and it's pretty clear she isn't satisfied with that. Huston's the kind of person who will find a way to help every single child.

This year she's set a goal of providing all 160 students' families with a Christmas basket, which will really be a large box, of food, including a ham and sides.

She also added a monthly family food giveaway at the school, so she can help any family in the Muncie Community Schools district. At November's giveaway, 170 families showed up. She keeps track of where they are from, and she's had at least one from each of the district's 12 schools.

After seeing how many Southview Elementary families used the giveaway, principal Kara Miller also started a monthly giveaway this school year. At the first one, 90 families showed up, Miller said.

Huston said she has met with other schools that are interested in something similar. Having a pantry in a school is a new idea for East Central Indiana. None of the other districts in the area have a similar program, and Huston isn't aware of any others in the state. She's sort of making it up as she goes, with help from a lot of other people.

There's principal Kelly Turner, the teachers at Southside, Second Harvest Food Bank, Champions for a Safe Community and a core group of volunteers. But really, it's the entire community that has made the programs a success, Huston said, because it takes a lot of donations to sustain.

Linda Crow graduated from Southside High School in 1981, and her class has become a big supporter of the pantry, raising $1,400 at the last reunion. She volunteers every week.

"We've grown up, have moved on, have careers, a lot of us have moved away," Crow said."But there are students who are still waking up in the home that you grew up in, sleeping in what was your bedroom, sitting in what was your classroom, maybe even your desk. Remember what that was like to know that there is a great need here still."

Something like the pantry would have really helped her family, Huston agreed, when she was going to Muncie Community Schools.

Ultimately, Huston said, if these students don't have to worry about food, they'll have the opportunity to be a kid, and a better, more alert student.

"I think it would be helpful at every single school," Huston said. "You're always going to have kids that need it."